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Join with YPN?

Posted by Psion [send private reply] at September 09, 2002, 09:02:05 AM

We've had visitors in #tpu on IRC who've told us of the existence of the Young Programmers Network (http://www.youngprogrammers.net/), a group that seems to have the same aims as TPU. I've suggested considering ways we could combine somehow (possibly into something that still contains YPN and TPU as elements). Please post your thoughts here, or on the first board in the YPN forums.

Posted by mop [send private reply] at September 09, 2002, 09:09:43 AM

I like TPU the way it is now.
If we destroyed their website they would have to come here!

Posted by regretfuldaydreamer [send private reply] at September 09, 2002, 10:23:26 AM

Hmm ... I visited there.

I think this site has strengths over them, but they have strengths over this.

TPU's Good Points: Fantastic Message Board System ... very simple and easy to navigate, Private Messages ... No stupid pics on message boards.

YPN Good Points: Technology News(I should read /dot), Tutorial's.

I say joining would make sense, but TPU would loose what is TPU. And would it be a new site or www.tpu.org or www.youngprogrammers.net? I can just see WW3 starting.

Posted by taubz [send private reply] at September 09, 2002, 10:46:49 AM

I'd be interested to know if their projects are active.

- taubz

Posted by RedX [send private reply] at September 09, 2002, 11:52:45 AM

"If we destroyed their website they would have to come here!"

That's a dangerouse thing to say. You might end up getting hired by M$ if you keep saying such stuff.

Posted by regretfuldaydreamer [send private reply] at September 09, 2002, 03:54:44 PM

Have you spoken to them about this plan? Although I think it should be more share resources than merge to one site.

Posted by Neumann [send private reply] at September 09, 2002, 03:59:53 PM

To merge, or not to merge, that is the question...

From their side, the are few reactions (see their forums). I don't know if it's because they don't use forum very much or they simply don't care.

Posted by mop [send private reply] at September 09, 2002, 06:45:06 PM

The best way is to let people chose! I prefer TPU for my own reasons and don't want to be forced into one big one.

This place is only really good because we all like it for our own reasons, and we only found it because we looked.

Quite the contrast to what I just said. Now I'm serious.

Posted by gian [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 12:03:53 AM

I would have to say I'm somewhat against any formal merging of the two sites. Some interaction between the organizations might be good, but like RDD said to join would be to lose TPU itself... Plus I don't want to see Devlocus kicked under the table in favour of PHP (yeauuuch!).
Also, note that they have 477 users, and we have ~2800 (although the number of active members is questionable).

Posted by regretfuldaydreamer [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 11:31:14 AM

I looked and I think we have more active members.

And our message board system is way better. (Should I say our or the TPU system).

I think the best thing to do would be to recomend them to use our message boards, and we head over there, add to and use their tutorial, news, code - snippet - submission system and perhaps tranfer the Interest Groups there. That way both sites are kept, and both engines are also kept. We could perhaps mirror their tutorials as well.

This is only a suggestion, and if it is implemented(or most probably a derirative of it) it should not be done for several months till the communities are well intergrated and don''t feel that they're joining with outsiders.

This site's soul seems to revolve around communication, whereas their soul revolves around building projects as a community(from the short glances around I've seen. If I spent time around I might find out it was totally different).

Also with this approach neither site is loosing its identity, and lets face it how many of us use anything other than the message boards and IRC regurally.

I think an idea would be that we all make an effort to hang around their message boards, help out and don't say anything negative. Keep the same username as here except put a '#' before it eg/ "#regretfuldaydreamer" That way they can see who's from this site, realise we're just the same as them. Also we can work out about how many of us are willing to make the effort and want to intergrate.

Once again this is a proposal for others to suggest improvements on. I don't care how modified and don't say that I'm wrong, just suggest improvements.

Of course there is an alternative.

No Intergration.

Posted by Psion [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 02:35:13 PM

We definitely won't be doing anything for a few months. I think everyone here knows how well-suited the system running this site is. At the moment, I'm working on a completely rewritten one that will be even better. When that is far enough along, I am going to try to show them that it is better than the new system that YPN is working on (and will be ready soon, I think), so that site engine clash is removed from the list of obstacles to integration.

I think there is no reason that TPU & YPN as organizations don't have everything to gain by combining. Only petty tribalism would stop someone from seeing that we have the same goals and not too many "active members" in either one. Joined together, we can have the same goals and more "active members." =) This would also be a good opportunity to create a non-age centered setup, which TPU lives inside and shares infrastructure/resources with.

Posted by diegoeskryptic [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 03:27:54 PM

hmmm... are we going to abandon this site for their site (or vice versa)? Or are we going to make a totally new site... I think i should go there and start getting used to some of the people... or at least invite them to our IRC channel.. so they can get to know us..... what do yall think..?

Posted by regretfuldaydreamer [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 03:34:50 PM

Yeah, oh and I don't think the abandon the youth thing is a good idea. The youth(not teen) thing is one of the things that makes the two sites unique.

Posted by mop [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 04:18:11 PM

If they do ever converge, I dibs the name "mop"!!

Posted by regretfuldaydreamer [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 04:23:06 PM

I doubt ther'd be a name clash.

And who would wanna be called Mop anyway, you mophead (joke)

Posted by mop [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 04:28:34 PM

/me cries hysterically

Posted by taubz [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 06:12:56 PM

I think some form of cooperation, at least, would be good. A starting poing would be to merge our chat areas. We can use the same bot that links the two #tpu channels on the two networks to join #tpu and #ypn (both on the same network, too).

If the YPN people agree to that, we could go from there after a few months.

- taubz

Posted by gian [send private reply] at September 10, 2002, 06:37:51 PM

I agree with Psion that TPU should reside in some age non-specific supersite (like Devlocus), and perhaps once we make this change, YPN would be willing to join forces with up to build that.
In terms of active users, just to give you an idea, in the last 24 hours, we've had 32 different people visit this site. I think that is fairly indicative of the number of people visiting here...

Posted by unknown_lamer [send private reply] at September 11, 2002, 08:18:16 AM

Why link the #ypn and #tpu with a bot when you can have one channel automatically forward to the other (like #linpeople -> #labyrinth does)?

Posted by ItinitI [send private reply] at September 11, 2002, 12:21:35 PM

If your thinking of merging, why not let TPU handle the forums, and YPN takecare of the wbe pages [e.g. tutorials, information, ect.]?

Posted by Psion [send private reply] at September 11, 2002, 02:37:27 PM

That would be nothing but unnecessary complexity.

Posted by ItinitI [send private reply] at September 11, 2002, 02:58:25 PM

Okay...

Posted by regretfuldaydreamer [send private reply] at September 11, 2002, 04:52:41 PM

Do they have their own server, or would the site stay on this one?

Posted by Psion [send private reply] at September 11, 2002, 07:03:16 PM

Look at the first post in this thread and answer that question for yourself.

Posted by ItinitI [send private reply] at September 11, 2002, 10:13:26 PM

I have to say I'm aganst merging. I prefer forums, with a small number of active users, rather than many users.
Also, I like the forums here much better than YPNs forums [Not to say their's are bad, I just prefer these forums].

Posted by Psion [send private reply] at September 12, 2002, 08:21:00 AM

They have less active forum users than TPU. Combining user bases would only simulate continuing TPU separately for a few months and gaining popularity.

Posted by unknown_lamer [send private reply] at September 12, 2002, 08:56:35 AM

I think you should write the new devlocus and install it and then come back to the idea of merging in a few months.

Posted by regretfuldaydreamer [send private reply] at September 12, 2002, 10:32:13 AM

Yeah, lamers idea sounds good.

Posted by CodeRed [send private reply] at September 12, 2002, 10:35:34 AM

No, lets use our 1337 H4x0r 5k1ll5 to steal there member base

Posted by ItinitI [send private reply] at September 12, 2002, 12:28:16 PM

Sweet!

Posted by Psion [send private reply] at September 12, 2002, 02:17:23 PM

That's been the idea all along.

Posted by RedX [send private reply] at September 12, 2002, 03:21:46 PM

Stealing their member base? Who would have tought... :-)

Posted by Psion [send private reply] at September 12, 2002, 04:15:15 PM

No, the idea is to show them that the new system can do everything they want as well....

(Not that the current system can't, but it's more awkward than I'd like)

Posted by ItinitI [send private reply] at September 17, 2002, 08:41:46 PM

I'v been posting at the YPN forums to see what they're like. The people seem like a nice and interesting group of programmers. They seem to have roughly 10-30 active posters from a wide variety of nations. About the question of whether their projects are active; I'm not real sure, they have/had a project to make an open source DOS distro, and most of the users seem to be actively coding. The majority seem to follow Old School ethics, though Gray Hat seems to be accepted [One ocasion comes to mind of a coding contest to write virii that they had].
SO, my .02$; I now think merging would be beneficial and possibly productive for both communities.

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